Wild Hunt - The PKB Plan

Okay, we had a week off, back to the grind. My plan will be different because my goals are different. I will make notes to the most efficient path where my path diverges. I will refund your admittance fee if you are dissatisfied with the advice, refunding you triple your payment.

PS- I wasn't feeling this when I got up on December 1. I'm better today. So, no more apologies and much more expanded coverage.

A Word About Special Ops Gear and Heroes

The Hero Is ALWAYS the most important thing. The gear is nice and I am not one to pass on easy gold or command points, but let's think about this. The gear will always be customized. I am not as down on customized as most people, but still, gear gets outleveled, so there's no point in killing yourself for the gear. Oh, and if they make the gear OP they will hit it with the nerf bat (q.v. Grief and Phoenix Flare). They can (and will) adjust the hero downward (Emma Frost) or upward (Mockingbird), or both (both of them). Here's the thing. The hero will likely go away for a good long while, if they come back at all. There is a larger advantage to hero ownership than to gear ownership, due to PVP bonuses and the way Op gear is structured (before we even factor the customization factor). Your first priority should be making it to the hero, regardless of initial impression. There were a lot of people kicking themselves after Spec 1 when they buffed Mock. They were kicking themselves more when she went on sale for 200 CP for the Black Friday-Cyber Monday insanity.

Long Term Preparation

If you haven't read my guide to being prepared for everything, then you probably don't have the heroes required for the deploy to load the Destroyer to complete the final task. You may already have them as a set, but, in case you don't and you're not the type to read ahead, you will need Beast (90 CP), Wolverine (90 CP), Storm (48 CP) and Kitty Pryde (33 CP) in order to do so. That's 261 command points. In case you don't have those heroes, and you don't happen to have 261 command points sitting around, you might want to consider reading my guide to getting more CPs.

If you don't have any of the heroes, and you intend to make a run at this, you will want to buy Storm first. You will want to do this because Storm opens the most efficient farm: Chaper 4, Mission 4, when done with a two-birding of the boss and fighting the epic boss Magneto. If you are completely new, to load the epic boss, you must complete every fight (you can, and should, skip the Fixer mini-boss fight and combine him with the Vapor boss fight) and complete every deploy (hence Storm). This advice will carry you far, as you will need to remember how to get to an epic boss in order to load the Destroyer to complete task 25.

If you have not one CP at this moment, go to Chapter 7, Mission 3 and run it either Hard-Hard-Jack O'Lantern or Hard-Vector-Jack O'Lantern. This is a very fast, 30 energy run that will net you many low yield roulettes. When you have 48 CP, purchase Storm immediately, and get to work on 4.4. By my math, you will have to do ~44 runs of 7.3 to get Storm (give or take, there is a lot of variance). Since you can do two every time you come back with full energy, two play sessions with fully ally bonus collection should net you 5-6 a day (without using ny giftable energy or gold), leading you to get Storm on Day 7-9. Give yourself a pat on the back. You have 64 runs of 4.4 ahead of you. That's about 3 a day. It's hard, but no one said it would be easy and you can do 3 per day in two play sessions. This works to 120 energy from time, ~45 energy from ally visits, and the remainer (~45) from gifts or gold. I would use the gifts. This is a long op and there's plenty of time.

Or, you could just spend the 25 gold. Either way, but every Op so far, I get a bunch of people thanking me for laying out how to go about it and telling me they did it. You can be one of those folks.

Efficient Results

As always, if you have concern about finishing on time, or want to finish quickly, it is imperative to be efficient with your ISO. It is more efficient to fight the bosses together, as a three-bird, if you can. If you cannot complete that fight (the Executioner-Thunderball-Piledriver fight is tricky), it is more efficient to take out a miniboss and then two-bird the boss (I would recommend taking out Thunderball in the above scenario). All efficient routes assume that you will three-bird the boss, if possible, and costs are listed as such.

A Note about Efficiency: Due to the task by task nature of special ops, the efficient path is not always the best path for where you are in the progression. Be sure to keep your next few tasks in mind when deciding whether to run efficiently or not. The GOAL is not efficiency. It is results. Efficiency is a tool to get results, but not a worthwhile result in itself.

Mission 1

There are two efficient routes, based on the nature of a mission with an Epic Boss. It is generally possible to put up a much higher score with an Epic Boss, although the scoring potential for this Epic Boss fight is low.

Do the Kitty Pryde deploy, skip 1 medium fight - 100 UISO

Run everything - 170 UISO

Mission 2

No Deploys, skip one low difficulty fight - 90 UISO

Mission 3

No Deploys, 3 high threats, 2 medium, "3-bird" main boss - 70 UISO

If you skip the minibosses, they will not appear with Loki.

You will still get the three bird bonus.

But on a much lower score base.

Day 1

Always exciting. Something new. I still think they are going to burn people out. The Special Ops aren't that brutal, but the PVP tournaments really are.

Plan/Results

Because my goals are different than yours I took the long road. I like to do the Epic Boss on every run to maximize my chance at his loot, but I'm a tad underwhelmed by this one's loot. Still, principle is principle. So:

Do two fights. You have to in order to get 3 Escaped Prisoners.

I'm sick of escaped prisoners. I feel like we just had these.

I did the Kitty Pryde deploy in the mission because I'm running the Epic.

If you are running this minimally, the KP deploy works for you. It will allow you to bypass somethings to load the boss.

Fight a miniboss.

I forget which miniboss I fought. Doesn't matter. They're all sucks. I'm sick of the Wrecking Crew.

Miniboss fights mess with your mission score but our first goal is Val.

Two fights to get three Jotun.

The Jotun in story mode don't count, so don't bother running a sub-optimal CP mission to find that out.

I did what was available. Was going to have to fight them all anyway to run to the Destroyer.

You will have to fight them as well, if you are running efficiently.

Defeat Enchantress.

I two-birded her with one of her minibosses. Three round fight. Perfect for The Doombringer Strategy. I am eager to see what kind of score I can put up on this mission when I don't have to fight a miniboss.

I have heard reports that Enchantress will leave if you do her harm... why would I do that when I can one shot Epic Overkill her three times for being boring already.

In Playdom's defense, Valk came into the Marvel Universe by way of The Enchantress, so she's kind of central to the story.

Day 1 Observations

Mead Horns have some serious PVP bonus. I replaced my 7.6 farmed goods with them, which skewed me a bit more on offense, but they have solid PVP bonus. Not better than 8.6 or 9.6, but you can buy them for silver and purples instead of the toil of farming. I don't like this trend because I invested a lot of time farming 7.6 and 8.6

Mission 1 has a TON of fights. It will be energy/UISO intensive to run that multiple times. PLAN WISELY

Remember, when you log in on Day 2, do not collect your gifts until after your research on the Mead Horn ends.

Day 2

Got up early and got on with it. Nothing like getting going on new stuff. Even if it's largely old stuff.

Tasks

Resource Management

Collect 10 Unstable Iso-8

Break Things

Defeat a Mini-Boss in Mission 2

Fang of the Dragon

Use Valkyrie's Dragonfang 3 times

Mission Accomplished!

Get 2 Stars of Mastery in Mission 1

Best Served Cold

Upgrade Laufey's Knife to Laufey's Needle

Plan/Results

Don't collect gifts. Complete the research, THEN collect your ISO. Else you will burn the day, farm them, or spend a gold. Why spend when you can just be smarter?

Sorry Playdom.com players, I dunno if you have any free stuff. Of course you can gift to infinity, so I have jealousy. And if you don't have to compete with Facebook players in PVP, I am really jealous.

Start your research.

Tapped me down to 24. Time to hit the Free Stuff page. I got 50. Booyah. The others I collected too recently.

You do know that these refresh every 12 days, right?

I'm gonna set some deploys and go do something else.

Day 2 Observations

Nothing really exciting except that the lack of new stuff, especially after the very intersting Ghost Rider special op, is disappointing. There's a new Jotun... woo hoo. Question. How is a 10 foot tall giant supposed to infitrate anything? He's ten feet tall and blue.

I got my first taste of Val in PVP. That's kooky. Her ability to gain health and save lives is crazy. She is a very interesting character. Her detractors are, in my opinion, people without wide vision. I am not that wide a vision person. I come up with kooky ideas, but I'm not that creative. So, I reserve judgement on things until I have experience with them. And a whole experience, at that. I think she is transformative, in a way that the following things were at their peaks: War Machine, Gamma Booster, Momentum Generator, Spider-Man, Quick-Action guns, Looping, Cap, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Ignore Defense, Mod Colossus, Emma, Mock, Phoenix Pinion, and WW2 Cap have been. That's a partial list of things that transformed the PVP environment for more than two weeks at a time (yes, really, once upon a time, War Machine ruled). I think Valk and elements of this set have that kind of potential.

Days 3-4

Day 3 for me was an interesting problem. I was 50 UISO away from a Destroyer run. Or I could have exited the map. Remember my core principle. Run the Epic when you can, because you don't know when you will be able to again. So, I ran it. Mission score from second run 569,810 points. But tapped out.

This is where the decision comes in. I have conceived of some interesting PVP builds that use the Hoarfrost Mace, that will not be useful after the end of the PVP tournament next Monday. So, I want it by then. So, I could buy UISO to run to Task 12, and then get through 13, 14, and 15 without spending a UISO. Or I could wait a day. Under the most efficient path, it's 90 UISO to three bird. So, 2 days if I don't buy, which normally wouldn't be a concern. Then 2 days to farm the UISO for the Research, and another 2 days of research. That's all of next week. Then, with 2 days of ISO plus remnant from the research and farming, I have to get 17, 18, 19, and 20. Yeah, looking ahead, if task 20 is the goal, I have to buy through Executioner. Oh well.

Tasks

The Scourge

Defeat Executioner

Phone a Friend

Collect 3 Distress Calls

Pick Your Norse

Take 2 Asgardians into Battle

Frequent Flyer

Complete 3 Flight Deck Missions

Staff Meeting

Upgrade Odin's Cane to Odin's Staff in the Lab

Plan

Finish out of Mission 1, then fight all the way through Mission 2 and beat the Executioner.

Full discussion above. 90 ISO is the most efficient route to Executioner. All fights minus one Easy, no deploys.

Collect Distress Calls while visiting allies.

Remember how I told you to use three yesterday. I hope you listened.

If you have Sif and/or Thor, you can do this outside of the Special Op.

This would be preferable as is will cost no UISO. I did mine on a fight in 9.6, which I'm farming.

You might even be able to do this in Practice PVP.

Three Minute Flight Deck Missions. Three of them.

Done. If only they could all be this easy.

Take a deep breath. Evaluate your ISO stores and your goals and do the research.

You get two days off after this, so, back to story mode and the PVP tournament.

Day 3 observations

As noted above, I spent the gold to do a minimum ISO run through Mission 2. That is a hard 3 bird, which is refreshing, though hard. Tact-Scrap-Bruiser is a nice build as your natural inclination is to pack a blaster for the bruiser and an infiltrator for the tactician. Scrapper can eat the inf alive, and much as I made fun of Thunderpants before, he can do a lot of damage with a blaster on the scene. Brunhilda the Bruiser + some combo of Bruiser/Tact/Generalist is the way to go. You have my word on it. WW2 Cap Bruiser, Herc, Beast and Human Torch all present interesting ideas in easy completion.

The day 3 portion after beating the Executioner is very simple and requires no expenditure of ISO whatsoever. That's nice of them, since we need 120 to do the research.

Day 4

Got lucky on the daily bonus and now have the UISO to do the research. JUST! Nothing left to do once you start this research for a couple days.

Day 5

Still researching. I did one fight in mission 3, to see how long it takes to load a fight where I could teamup with Val to do the next task. One. It looks like we can do the third block in about one sitting after storing UISO for the two days. I can have my mace sooner than I expected.

Third Block - Days 6-10

Here We Go!

Tasks

My Life For You

Use Valkyrie's Sacrificial Blessing

Shadow Boxing

Defeat 5 Illusionary Lokis

Instability

Collect 20 Unstable Iso-8

Wreck the Crew

Defeat 4 Wrecking Crew Members

Battle Royale

Win 1 PVP battle

Plan

DO NOT COLLECT GIFTS YET

If necessary, collect up to 30 gifts, but leave 20 UISO for the task ahead.

IMPORTANT - There are two ways that this mission can load: With a Medium Mission featuring Loki? and with a Medium Mission with Jotun and Goons. If you get the Loki? one, abort the mission by going to the flight deck, clicking your Spec Ops plane, and clicking to Abort the Mission. Do this until you get a medium mission without Loki?.

Half of the Wrecking Crew will load after the single medium fight. We can teamup with Val there.

There is a KNOWN ISSUE with this task. Use Dragonfang in this fight. Just to be safe, use Sac Blessing as well.

I did this and it worked. Cap and Val together are fearsome.

Illusionary Lokis appear in some medium and some hard fights in Mission 3.

There are two hard missions with 2 Illusionary Lokis. He also appears in a medium mission and a different configuration of a hard mission.

Illusionary Lokis dissapate after taking a certain amount of damage. They are easy to kill, nigh impossible to overkill.

Wrecking Crew

Fight the Miniboss Wrecking Crew.

They won't load with Loki, so you have to fight them as a miniboss.

Finish this mission by fighting Valkyrie?Loki.

Then, restart the mission, and fight the other half of the Wrecking Crew again.

Alternatively, you could clean up your other 2 Wrecking Crew members on Mission 1 or 2 if you are short on stars.

It is more efficient for the mop up phase to go back into Mission 3 and fight them there. One Medium fight, and into it. 30 UISO.

Off to PVP

If you've been banned, they are really thumbing their nose at you now. 1 PVP fight or whatever gold. Amazing.

If you were banned for cause, no sympathy. If you're Despot Janko or any of the other people who have been banned for no real reason... deep sympathy.

Mopping Up

By this point, it gets scattered and you just finish.

Stampede

Use Valkyrie's Summon Aragorn 3 Times

Master of Illusion

Defeat Loki

Star Search

Complete 3 Stars of Mastery in all Spec Ops 5 Missions

Utter Destruction

Defeat Destroyer

Plan

Aragorn doesn't have a cool down.

I used this on the second Wrecking Crew in Mission 3 to set up the Loki fight.

Fight Loki. Again.

Hope you have your stars. I didn't, so I have to run it again. Oh well.

I also have to run Mission 2 a third time. For 10K points. I had 10 UISO, need 80 more. Two days.

I'm running that one first, because I know the efficient path.

Mission 3's 3rd run needs 70. That's another day on top of what I've done.

Back to Chapter 1. Fight every fight, do every deploy. Beat the Destroyer, Collect Val.